| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Droll Stories, V. 1 by Honore de Balzac: Don't breathe a syllable; but this evening, in consideration of 20,000
crowns and my domain of Brie, I shall take her measure."
Upon this the advocate blanched, and the courtier perceived he touched
a tender point. As he had only lately returned from the wars, he did
not know that the lovely woman adored by the king had a husband.
"You appear ill," he said.
"I have a fever," replied the knave. "But is it to her that you give
the contract and the money?"
"Yes."
"Who then manages the bargain? Is it she also?"
"No," said the noble; "her little arrangements are concluded through a
Droll Stories, V. 1 |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: the Pembles HE had been, but with the Boyers, coming down in their
company from Rome--a point on which she insisted, a little to his
confusion, and as to which she had her evidence in hand. The
Boyers she had known, but didn't know the Pembles, though she had
heard of them, and it was the people he was with who had made them
acquainted. The incident of the thunderstorm that had raged round
them with such violence as to drive them for refuge into an
excavation--this incident had not occurred at the Palace of the
Caesars, but at Pompeii, on an occasion when they had been present
there at an important find.
He accepted her amendments, he enjoyed her corrections, though the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: so long that flying dragons could exist.
The truth is, that folks' fancy that such and such things cannot
be, simply because they have not seen them, is worth no more than a
savage's fancy that there cannot be such a thing as a locomotive,
because he never saw one running wild in the forest. Wise men know
that their business is to examine what is, and not to settle what
is not. They know that there are elephants; they know that there
have been flying dragons; and the wiser they are, the less inclined
they will be to say positively that there are no water-babies.
No water-babies, indeed? Why, wise men of old said that everything
on earth had its double in the water; and you may see that that is,
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